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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 3:10 am 
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So, Nazis happened in Charlottesville. Nazis with torches, Nazis with sticks, Nazis with shields, Nazis with pepper spray, Nazis with rifles, Nazis with racist face tattoos. Nazis everywhere. They fought with counter-protesters, some of who also came wielding makeshift weapons. Then some Nazi lunatic plowed his car into a crowd on purpose and killed a woman.

What is the best way to deal with Nazis?

How do you show disapproval without giving them a bigger platform for their hatred? How do you fight back against them without enabling them to play the victim?

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 3:47 am 
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Let them stomp around in an absolute vacuum. No counter-protesters, no bystanders, no press, no state or local officials, and a minimum police presence to keep the racists in and everyone else as far away as possible. They should think they are the only people in the whole city, and when they are done and have gone home, you issue a single press release on the matter saying that the government and the people they represent do not approve of their views and message, and that's it. It should be third page news in the local paper.

The point of a protest is to draw attention to your cause. Any attention, positive or negative. Remove the attention, and the protest is ineffectual.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:02 am 
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balthazar wrote:
no press


Probably easier said than done. The right wing press will show up to give them positive publicity. There will be triumphant, crowing Breitbart pieces and Alex Jones ranting about manly men taking back America and Fox News pundits going on about what peaceful protesters they are compared to those horrible Black Lives Matter rioters (if only because there's no-one to fight) and how while they don't agree with the Nazis, they have legitimate grievances about the runaway political correctness inflicted on the nation by that Obama. If that happens, the mainstream and left-wing media will show up to cover the coverage. It will become a recursive media circus. And then some Nazi is going to punch a New York Times reporter.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 4:38 am 
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That's why you have to get creative with your maintenance schedule. Out-of-towners get held up in highway and bridge inspections and recursive detours, and you start busting up streets and sidewalks for water pipe and electrical system upgrades, essentially creating a moat of torn up street around the protesters. The road in and out you block off during the protest, and you run what basically amounts to a DDOS attack on the wireless internet inside the isolation zone by hogging as much bandwidth as possible for "Official City Business", or sumsuch.

Alternatively, just give them the bureaucratic runaround when they apply for their permits. Issue permits to protest for each individual group at a different place, and have the starting zone be in a place that's confusing or difficult to find. Book other more popular events at the same time in a different location, or force a scheduling conflict, having the March for Veterans and Cancer-Riddled Orphans or a Zombie Run at the same time and place, then ask if they'd care to re-book.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 5:14 am 
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An interesting idea, but I don't think it can work.

First of all, if the protesters can get there, then so can the reporters. (If necessary, a reporter can just be some guy with a notebook or a cellphone camera, and is probably a lot better at getting into places than your average protester; thus, you can't keep the reporters out without keeping the protestors out).

And if you keep the protestors out, then they'll be denied the safety valve of being able to hold an official protest - the more stubborn of them will get together anyway, probably arranging things over social media, and simply hold their protest wherever they can get together (i.e. in some place that you don't know in advance). Short of a complete telecommunications blackout (which is a bad idea for lots of reasons) I don't see how you can avoid an illegal protest forming wherever enough of these people can get together.

Arranging for other, more popular events on the other end of the city at the same time is probably a good idea, though.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 7:02 am 
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The nice thing about an illegal protest, is that it's illegal.

And the nice thing about social media, is that it's so very difficult to vete all the people who join the facebook group.

Let them have their official protest. In dribs and drabs all over the city where an eye can be kept on them and a very large wet blanket can be brought down if anyone starts to get rambunctious (on either side). Ten small protests of fifty people in quiet parks across the city over two days is alot less impressive then one big riot of five hundred in an afternoon, especially if drowned out by the international music festival being held concurrently.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 7:41 am 
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Charlottesville tried to do something similar - tried to relocate the protest to another park further away from the center of town where they'd presumably get less attention and cause less damage. But the organizers threatened to sue saying that it would be a violation of their first amendment rights, and the ACLU supported them. So that idea died.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 7:59 am 
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That's why you gots to have your ducks in a row before you issue the permits. Thus, the monitoring of social media.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:32 am 
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Attempt to split them off from the "sort of similiar ideas, but not really Nazis" crowd.

Find some bloke with a southern accent and a confederate flag, who says the Nazis are as bad as the northern aggression. Give him airtime like he is a representant of a relevant part of the protests.

Find the spokespersons of the protests, who are best (and most believable) at expressing that they condemn the violence and that regardless of the difference of opinion with the counter protesters, they feel more kinship towards peacefull counterprotesters, then towards rioters on their own side. Hand them around all studios for interviews.

In short make it easy for rightwingers, to distance themself from the Nazis, without giving the apearence that the left has scored a point here.

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 Post Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2017 9:07 pm 
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arcosh wrote:
Find the spokespersons of the protests, who are best (and most believable) at expressing that they condemn the violence and that regardless of the difference of opinion with the counter protesters, they feel more kinship towards peacefull counterprotesters, then towards rioters on their own side. Hand them around all studios for interviews.

A neo-Nazi who is firmly dedicated to non-violence is going to be extremely difficult to find. They came prepared for violence. On the off chance you did find one, the rest would probably disown and deride him on Twitter. It's not easy to control messages in the internet age. Also, who would be trying to do the controlling? The media? The government?

balthazar wrote:
That's why you gots to have your ducks in a row before you issue the permits. Thus, the monitoring of social media.

Are you sure you're comfortable with the government using these tactics to minimize protests? If they can use them on white supremacists, they can use them on anyone.

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 Post Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 4:21 am 
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Kea wrote:
balthazar wrote:
That's why you gots to have your ducks in a row before you issue the permits. Thus, the monitoring of social media.


Are you sure you're comfortable with the government using these tactics to minimize protests? If they can use them on white supremacists, they can use them on anyone.


You discount the likelihood that these tactics are already being used. Social media is in the public domain, and you don't need a warrant to view someone's tweets. You don't even need a twitter account. You start searching hashtags relating to an upcoming event, and if you see alot of people saying that they're looking forward to causing trouble, say by riling up any counter-protesters, or counter-protesters getting pumped up about punching nazis in the face, then it might be a good idea to increase the police presence at that event, and have the riot squad ready to roll, just in case.

From there, it's a short step and one bored intern away to join an applying protest group's facebook page and group, and really start getting a handle on what the plan is.

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 Post Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 5:12 am 
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I'm sure those techniques are being used - by both law enforcement and journalists (assuming they're competent). It's not hard to have police turn up at a public protest, if we assume it's been arranged over social media well in advance.

What's nextdoor to impossible, for precisely the same reasons, is to try to keep the media out. (And personally, I think that's a good thing.)

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 Post Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 5:30 am 
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You're correct of course, on both counts, but you can arrange for there to be no story to cover. In a previous example, I noted that it could be arranged for there to be ten smaller spread out protests with a sizable police presence held concurrently with a larger more popular event, as opposed to a single large riot during the middle of a slow news week. Now which is more likely to make it to the front page of the local paper? The evening news? National news? International?

As the proverb goes, any press is good press. While not always true, more press is certainly the goal when it comes to protests. If things stay quiet enough to keep off the front page of the local paper, I'd call that a pretty good success.

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 Post Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 8:49 am 
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Kea wrote:
arcosh wrote:
Find the spokespersons of the protests, who are best (and most believable) at expressing that they condemn the violence and that regardless of the difference of opinion with the counter protesters, they feel more kinship towards peacefull counterprotesters, then towards rioters on their own side. Hand them around all studios for interviews.

A neo-Nazi who is firmly dedicated to non-violence is going to be extremely difficult to find. They came prepared for violence. On the off chance you did find one, the rest would probably disown and deride him on Twitter. It's not easy to control messages in the internet age. Also, who would be trying to do the controlling? The media? The government?



That would be on the assumption, that the common pattern of some peaceful protesters and some rioters of the same cause doing their thing in parallel did apply there. If not i guess you can find a peaceful protest for a similar enough cause if you look long enough.

And if Nazis start to shoot (metaphorically) at say other people who want confederate statues to stay, but are not rioting or other fellow rightwingers, then that eventually erodes their feeling of being part of a rising tide, because they attack part of their own tide, and eventually a larger part of their tide will shoot back.

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 Post Posted: Tue Aug 15, 2017 8:52 am 
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I meant the permit-wanking. If they can split up a bunch of white supremacists into 10 tiny park gatherings, then the Trump administration can lean on the government of DC to disperse something like the Women's March to 100 library parking lots in the DC exurbs.

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